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Decisions might be better when teams don’t get along

Nature Human Behaviour volume 1, Article number: 0109 (2017) Cite this article

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Brainstorming was developed over 60 years ago, along with its key concept that ‘no idea is a bad idea’. But could the opposite be true, is brainstorming stifling, rather than unleashing, our creativity? In environments in which ideas go unchallenged, there are techniques that can improve creativity by encouraging criticism.

In the early 1950s, Alex Osborn invented the rules of brainstorming, a single technique inside his larger work on creativity, Applied Imagination1. Brainstorming quickly became a cultural phenomenon, with its format and rules widely circulated. Chief among those rules was ‘Do not criticize one another’s ideas’ or a differently worded phrase with the similar intent of deferring judgment on ideas as they are being generated.

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References

  1. Osborn, A. Applied Imagination. Principles and Procedures of Creative Writing (Scribner, 1954)

  2. Nemeth, C. J., Personnaz, B., Personnaz, M. & Goncalo, J. A. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 34, 365–374 (2004).

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  1. Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 74171, USA

    David Burkus

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  1. David Burkus
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Correspondence to David Burkus.

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Burkus, D. Decisions might be better when teams don’t get along. Nat Hum Behav 1, 0109 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0109

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0109

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